The Collected Letters, Volume 33

If you could, tomorrow or next day, look into the Museum for me, and try what is to be found of a “Lord Baltimore,”1—who came to Frh 20–25 Septr 17392 at Reinsberg, leading Algarotti3 by the hand, and seems to have impressed Frh a good deal—?— There is an Epître [letter] to him on Liberty (Oeuvres XIV 71)4 shortly after; but no particulars there, or afterwards, except the small fact stated above. If I introduce that (as I must),
there shd be some slight inquiry after any history the “Goddam”5 may have.

The family name is Calvert (Dictionnaries will as soon have this as Baltimore); Yorkshire people; the first (Baltimore) of them led out the Colony whh still bears their name:6 how this Baltre is related genealogically to that one,—6th straight downwards or how?7 They were Irish Peers (Baltimore Town,8 south of Ireland), and are now extinct: so that I can find next to nothing of him or them in the Books I have here. There is an Irish Peerage-Book; but we have it not in the London Library:—I guess it is worth little, and may be difficult to find in the Museum: but Mr Watts,9 if you applied to him with my respects, wd assist you in that or other courses. A reasonable Peerage-Book wd at once tell all I want.

This Ld Baltimore of F.'s, I discover here by searching and sifting, died in 1751; must have married abt 1730:10—his Son, the next Ld Baltimore, wrote some Dilettante volume or two;—and had a nasty “Trial” (Improper Female accusing him) to undergo abt 1770–80; after whh he kept in Naples mainly.11— I do not know the name of my one, even.

He stood godfather (‘representing’ Foreign Sovereigns &c) to some of Prince Fred's children; whence I infer he may have been
in Fred's Household,12 and an Opposition Pitt13 character, after that at Reinsberg.— Some way or other you will get me what little I want of him.

Or perhaps even I shall find it at the London Library today,—for I am going to try Walpole's Catalogue of Noble and Royal Authors, whh has at least an article abt the Son Baltimore.14—Let us see you on Sunday evg to report progress at any rate. And on the whole, if you are too busy, never mind this insignift problem;—but come, and report no-progress.

I am at my wit's end to stick together these Reinsberg cinders, or get them into any kind of human fusion,—disgusting and contemptible as they are to me if never so fused!—

1. Charles Calvert (1699–1751), 5th Baron Baltimore. He had been touring Europe and visited Frederick at Rheinsberg (castle N of Berlin), Sept. 1739, on his way back to England; see Works 14:252–53.

2. TC takes these dates from J. D. E. Preuss, Oeuvres de Frédéric le Grand (Berlin, 1846–57) 14:14, although Preuss also publishes Frederick's letter to Algarotti, late Sept. 1739, about the eight days they spent at Rheinsberg (Preuss 18:4).

3. Francesco Algarotti (1712–64), Italian connoisseur of the arts and sciences; see Works 14:250–54, 327–28, 15:85, and 16:319. He returned to England with Baltimore, but on Frederick's accession, 1740, was called back to the Prussian court. Leaving Germany for good in 1754, he settled in Italy and continued to correspond with Frederick until his death. Frederick then had a marble monument to
him encased in the wall at the Pisa Campo Santo.

6. George Calvert (1580?—1632), 1st Baron Baltimore; a Roman Catholic convert, he was prevented by the Virginia Company from planting a colony S of the
James River, 1629–31, but was given a land grant for the colony of Maryland, N of the river Potomac, 1632. Baltimore is its chief city.

11. Frederick Calvert (1732–71), 6th baron, profligate and extravagant son of Charles, 5th baron, and direct descendant of George, 1st Baron Baltimore;
author of Tour to the East in the Years1763and1764 … Also Select Pieces of Oriental Wit, Poetry and Wisdom (1767), Gaudia Poetica, Latina, Anglica, et Gallica Lingua composita (Ausburg, 1769), and Caelestes et Inferi (Venice, 1771); he was tried and acquitted of the abduction and rape of Sarah Woodcock, a London milliner, 1768; he d. (with no legitimate heirs) at Naples, and the title became extinct (Complete Peerage 1:393–95).

12. Charles Calvert was a close friend and staunch supporter of Frederick Louis (1707–51), prince of Wales; he was his gentleman of the bedchamber at Hanover, 1731–47, and cofferer of the prince's household, 1747–51. In 1737, George II (1683–1760) said of him in an attack on the prince's friends: “[T]here is my Lord Baltimore, who thinks he understands everything and
understands nothing—who wants to be well with both courts, and is well at neither—and, entre nous, is a little mad” (John, Lord Hervey, Memoirs of the Reign of George II [1848] 2:435).

13. William Pitt (1708–78), later prime minister (from 1758) and 1st earl of Chatham, 1766. In a speech to Parliament, 1743, which strongly opposed the govt.'s and the king's Hanoverian policy and system of subsidies to continental powers, Pitt
offended both the prince of Wales and George II. He had been made groom of the bedchamber to the prince of Wales in 1737 but resigned the post in 1745, formalizing his breach with the prince (see Marie Peters, The Elder Pitt [1998] 30 and 34).

14. I.e., Frederick, 6th baron. Horace Walpole, A Catalogue of the Royal and Noble Authors of England, Scotland and Ireland … Enlarged and continued to the present time by T. Park (1806) 5:278 (see Works 14:253). It also had an article (5:175) about the 1st baron.